Part III- a long time later...

Since so much has happened since my last post, I will have to just give a brief recap of everything.

London:
The third day, J and I had agreed to meet my uncle near Big Ben for lunch.  My uncle had given us a cell phone to use to call him when we were ready, but not only did it have a passcode I couldn't figure, but also I happened to forget to pick it up off the table to bring it with me...

J and I left bright and early in order to bring our luggage through the tube system of London to St. Pancreas station, where we would be departing for Brussels later that evening.  Thus began our death march through hell.  First of all, in my inexperience, I had neglected to bring a handy-dandy wheely suitcase, instead, my large luggage was one where you (aka your boyfriend) carries manually.  And to make matters worse, this hand luggage weighs the better part of 40 lbs.  So we walk 1.5 miles from my aunt and uncle's house to the train station, dragging over 150 lbs of luggage, up hills, down hills.  We finally arrived at the station, dripping sweat and gingerly flexing sore shoulders.  I think I've mentally blacked out that horrific experience of dragging our suit cases through London's tube stations, but my memory clears after finding a cart at Pancreas to carry our luggage the last 500 yds to the luggage storage place.  We put our gosh-darned cases in their (not quite) eternal resting place and waltzed out, feeling considerably more buoyant without their added weight.

We went to see Big Ben, the London Eye (from afar... I hate heights, so we didn't go on).

Then began our search for my uncle.  He had told us the name of his office building and we thought we could recognize it upon seeing it, but to no avail.  Finally after much angst in a rotten-fish smelling London phone booth, which turned out to not be in service after all, I resolved to ask to borrow some random stranger's phone.  A very very VERY nice lady let us borrow her phone and we were finally able to meet my uncle.  He took us to the Garden Cafe where we had fish and chips and pear cider.

From thence we sauntered to Buckingham palace.  Unfortunately I don't have pictures of that since my camera died pretty much right before we got there.  After viewing the palace from afar (we didn't feel like paying or waiting in line to get in) we walked, and walked, and walked, and walked some more to get to a metro station.  My knees had stiffened up and were too swollen to walk any more for some reason, so I was starting to feel like a 2 yr old in desperate need of a nap.

Fast forward a bit, and we were in the British National library viewing the Magna Carta, the Guttenberg Bible, and various other important documents which shaped history.  From there, we walked to the train station, met up with S and B, the other girls we would be traveling with, and got on our Eurostar train to Brussels.